Graduate Program

Term Schedule

Spring 2019

Female genital cutting encounters vaginal cosmetic surgeries at the intersection of poverty and wealth, race and class, barbaric practices and the pleasure principle. Bodies of poor, African, and mostly black women and children embody a fateful condition that can be redeemed by technologies of progress and humanitarian discourses. This course invites students to challenge assumptions related to agency, race, class, the representation of the body, and the fragmented transnational sisterhood. The discussion expands to bodies caught in domestic violence, rape, lynching, and skin whitening. Readings and films: Alice Walker's "Warrior's Marks" and "Possessing the Secret of Joy"; "Manya Mabika"; "Fantacola"; "Sarabah"; "Women with Open Eyes"; "Black Sisters, Speak Up"; "The Suns of Independence"; "Desert Flower"; and Maryse Condé's "Who Slashed Célanire Throat?"

This course explores the contributions of black feminists to literary studies and visual and cultural studies. Beginning with Ida B. Wells, and then moving ahead to the foundational anthologies of the 1980s and continuing to the contemporary moment, we will cover a wide range of critical thinkers, including bell hooks, Hortense Spillers, Toni Morrison, Michele Wallace, and Valerie Smith. Some background in literary or visual studies is really essential.

Spring 2019

Female genital cutting encounters vaginal cosmetic surgeries at the intersection of poverty and wealth, race and class, barbaric practices and the pleasure principle. Bodies of poor, African, and mostly black women and children embody a fateful condition that can be redeemed by technologies of progress and humanitarian discourses. This course invites students to challenge assumptions related to agency, race, class, the representation of the body, and the fragmented transnational sisterhood. The discussion expands to bodies caught in domestic violence, rape, lynching, and skin whitening. Readings and films: Alice Walker's "Warrior's Marks" and "Possessing the Secret of Joy"; "Manya Mabika"; "Fantacola"; "Sarabah"; "Women with Open Eyes"; "Black Sisters, Speak Up"; "The Suns of Independence"; "Desert Flower"; and Maryse Condé's "Who Slashed Célanire Throat?"

This course explores the contributions of black feminists to literary studies and visual and cultural studies. Beginning with Ida B. Wells, and then moving ahead to the foundational anthologies of the 1980s and continuing to the contemporary moment, we will cover a wide range of critical thinkers, including bell hooks, Hortense Spillers, Toni Morrison, Michele Wallace, and Valerie Smith. Some background in literary or visual studies is really essential.